Pregl started his career as chemist after he studied medicine at the University of Graz. With his focus on physiology and especially chemical physiology, he suffered from the limitations of quantitativeorganicmicroanalysis. The small quantities of substances he obtained during the research of bile acid made it necessary to improve the process of elemental analysis by reducing the necessary components. At the end of his research, he had lowered the minimal amount of substance necessary for the analysis process by a factor of 50. He invited chemists to learn his method of elemental analysis, so that the method was soon widely accepted.